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The Nuclear Option--that was then. Now we call it Reconciliation.
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About Me
- Anne
- The middle of America. As for me, moderate in everything but politics. As Tom Roeser said, she went to Harvard and turned right. I come from The Chicago School, not the Chicago Way. Tweet street @backyardconserv
21 comments:
They're both hypocrites. The GOP had no problems ditching the filibuster when they wanted to end Democratic obstruction. Now that they're the minority, they've changed their tune, since they want to block every single vote. When the Democrats were in the minority they loved the filibuster, now that they're in the majority-not so much.
Well, the GOP didn't ditch it in the end did they.
At least they were honest in calling it the nuclear option.
Democrats are calling it Reconciliation.
And the GOP battle had to do with the confirmation of Supreme Court justices, who had always before only had to be judged on whether they knew the law. Democrats were openly giving them ideological litmus tests. That was more a matter of principle I think that could be defended in that case--because we were talking about the third branch of government.
In this instance Democrats are attempting a massive takeover of 18-20% of the US economy--and without bipartisan approval, which has never been done before. And they are attempting to push it through with a mechanism meant only for budget matters, not major policy--that's an end run around our democratic system. Very wrong.
Just to play Devil's Advocate for fun, what about the argument some are posting that Reconciliation has been used dozens of times on issues related to complex give-n-take on health issues, and more?
The nuclear option Breitbart is talking of had to do with ending the filibuster by changing the rules, not offering a "meeting on the mound."
Reconcilation is supposedly the latter.
..of course it's an attempt to "push" something through, even if serving as the mere scaffolding to which they can attach stuff later. Though, my understanding is that the offer is very nearly the same old Obama/Nancy/Care stuff.
Thoughts on Breitbart's allegedly misapplied term?
The GOP didn't ditch it in the end (and by the way, it wasn't about the SCOTUS, but about lower-level Federal judges), they didn't have to, the threat of an end run around the filibuster was enough to get the Democrats to drop it. The threat of an end run by the Democrats may accomplish the same. But you may recall that in the late 1990s, the Republicans held up Clinton judicial appointees (applying a litmus test perhaps?) until Clinton struck an unprecedented deal with the GOP Senate (see the New York Times, May 5th, 1998), giving them a say in nominating the judges. So their later move to get Bush's nominees appointed seems much less like standing on the principle of the President choosing the judges he's granted the authority to nominate and more like trying to make sure that there are plenty of Republican judges on the bench (a litmus test).
Secondly, you talk as if health care is the only thing the Republicans are filibustering. It isn't, far from it. If it was, I would agree with your point. As much as I dislike the Democrats, they are correct on the matter of the filibuster-that the Republicans are abusing the filibuster to the point of absurdity. The House has passed 290 bills that can't even be taken up the Senate because of the minority's obstruction. If the Senate Democrats decide an end-run around the filibuster is necessary, so be it. It's not undemocratic, democracy in its essence means majority rule and the Democrats are the majority party. Letting the minority rule is most definitely undemocratic. If the Democrats don't do it than both sides will filibuster everything the other side wants to do and the Senate will resemble the Western Front during WW I, which is probably not what the people want.
The filibuster is one issue. Reconciliation on budget issues is another.
Both are valuable tools.
I don't think healthcare should be done under reconciliation. it's too big
The term 'nuclear option' was coined by Trent Lott in 2005 to describe a Republican proposal to change the Senate rules on filibusters for judicial nominations. The term has never been used as a synonym for reconciliation until Republicans revived it in a blatantly dishonest attempt to smear Democrats with the charge of hypocrisy. Reconciliation has been used to pass almost all health-related Federal legislation over the past thirty years.
If there is a right-wing lie that Anne Leary will not help to spread, I have yet to find it.
(Sorry, my server was acting up)
meatbrain please.
If so much has been done with reconciliation to pass healthcare in the last 30 years how come we don't have big government healthcare now?
Even Robert Byrd, the Dem author of the reconciliation rule says this is a misuse of it. Here.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/byrd-dont-pass-health-or-energy-reform-via-reconciliation.php
Duh: Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), the Appropriation Committee chairman, has sent a letter to his colleagues articulating his opposition to using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care or climate change legislation.
"I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation.... As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose."
This isn't a surprising move. Byrd is, to say the least, a long-serving senator from a coal state and he voted yesterday along with 25 of his colleagues to prevent the senate from passing climate change legislation through the reconciliation process. More significantly, he's the author of what is known (by sheer coincidence) as the "Byrd rule", which makes any provision in a reconciliation bill doesn't impact entitlement or tax law vulnerable to a point of order--and, therefore a 60-vote threshold. The Byrd rule is, like the filibuster, extra-constitutional, but it's also standard practice in the Senate, and, it's to be expected that its author takes a limited view of what belongs in a reconciliation bill.
The full text of the letter is available here.
I enjoyed the following, from Dr. William Jacobson:
There is no substantive difference between invoking a point of order to evade the filibuster rule and the misuse of budget reconciliation process to accomplish the same thing. The end result is the elimination of the filibuster in order to achieve a non-budgetary result for the political majority. The procedural differences do not make a difference to the ultimate goal, which is the point of the post.
Like my poor father once said, this is what we call "distinction without a difference."
One form of shoving something down the throat is as good as another version of shoving something down the throat that (this time) the American people have repeatedly said they wish no part of...
Anne burbles:
"If so much has been done with reconciliation to pass healthcare in the last 30 years how come we don't have big government healthcare now?"
Translation: Why doesn't reality conform to Anne's fantasies?
Answer: I don't know and I don't care. Reality is not required to magically rearrange itself to match whatever goofy questions Anne Leary comes up with to avoid discussing the facts.
Fact: Virtually every major change in federal health care policy over the past thirty years has been passed via reconciliation.
Fact: Republicans led the way in ignoring the intended purpose of reconciliation, when they used it to pass the deficit-increasing Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.
Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Anne Leary is perfectly welcome to ignore reality. However, the rest of us are not required to follow her down the rabbit hole. Using reconciliation to pass health care reform is hardly the world-shattering break with precedent that wingnuts like Anne would have us believe. This meme is simply another cynical attempt to obstruct health care reform and leave the control of medical decisions in the hands of the insurance companies.
And let us not fail to note that Anne Leary still refuses to retract her lie that the "nuclear option" and reconciliation are one and the same thing.
"One form of shoving something down the throat is as good as another version of shoving something down the throat..."
Fact: Passing a bill via reconciliation requires 51 votes in the Senate.
The wingnuts have now redefined majority rule as "shoving something down the throat".
"Man then goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing." -- Douglas Adams
51 votes could also be attained in some scenarios to assure the eating of human flesh, but that would make such action neither moral nor desirable.
FACT: Most people are more concerned about their job status than being plunked into jail for not signing onto some kind of forced Eurosocialist health care glop. Most of us are happy with the current system and tell of a need to tweak matters at the state level and allow cross state competition, NOT turn this into a Federal matter. This action is the dream of Democrats and unions and lobbyists and give-ins to the prescription drug lords. It is NOT the will of the people. And Nancy EggEYES damn well knows it.
FACT: Even the lofty NHS in Britain is so "efficient" it is the world's third largest employer after the Indian Railways system and the People Army of Red China.
ANOTHER FACT: The Democrats are willing to committ political suicide knowing full well their very jobs are on the line because they know that socialist care glop, while not very efficient, is the "tipping point" for further socialist actions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ-6ebku3_E
...and the real issue at hand of course is that this is less to do with "public option" than the methodology by which eventually liberals will dispose of private health insurance.
And THAT is force, and WHY fines and jail are now required.
It has nothing to do with "choice" (unless you're a Canadian big wig with connetions and can get away with saying "my body my choice." Sounds nice, but does not apply to the little people, eh?)
http://scaramouchee.blogspot.com/2010/02/its-my-health-its-my-choice.html
The reason is that everything will get sucked into the giant "public option" maw.
This dishonesty is what's being crammed through. And they know it.
http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2010/02/health-care-in-spinsville.html
The irony here of the Prez spinning this crappola as Putting American In Charge of their Healthcare is rather overwhelming. How utterly Orwellian to promote it thusly with a plan pulled from whole cloth that is anything but that. A plan concocted by leftist politians with an itch to manage things far beyond the control of the average person. And threatening jail or fines for non-compliance. The Canadian prime minister who shuttles across the border has control. Average Canadians don't. We don't. The NHS employess in Britain who get popped to the front of the line ahead of the standard 10-month MRI waiting lines (take a red number please, and sit down sir!) have control.
We won't. Not under ObamaCare.
Currently I can get an MRI follow-up in 15 minutes after seeing a pulmonary specialist and travel just down the road. Under ObamaCare that prospect is rather unlikely.
The ObamaCare advocates yap about the public option being "real competition." Yet another Orwellian spin.
Real competition? What about the 1300 or so insurance companies generally not allowed to even compete?
That's a state issue. Why must this now be a Federal concern?
Public option, they say?
That will cause a condition known as "crowd out" if it applies to almost everyone, and will force companies and individuals to change over to the public option once the 40% tax hit on private plans takes full effect.
Everything will sucked into the giant maw of the public option. Obama is on record as supporting this notion of using this very methodology of driving the private insurers out of business.
And having done so, what about THAT would be "real competition."?
"First, we let government programs, the tax code, and special-interest-driven regulation slowly kill private markets. Second, we have government take over each area as it collapses: first health care for the elderly, then the poor, then the kids, then the near-elderly. Lather, rinse, and repeat until government controls it all."
--The Cato Institute
"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences."
--C. S. Lewis
It's the moral and economic equivalent of Obama and his idiot marxian advisors proclaiming that we don't need 1/6 of the US economy anymore under private enterprise.
Course, they don't think private markets are any good.
Mark Steyn has the best sampling of the other problem of Eurosocialist glop (other than trillions in costs still untold, as with most unaffordable entitlements that kill nations):
The nationalization of your very existence.
http://wakepedia.blogspot.com/2009/07/health-care-for-all-and-happy.html
Wingnuttery now not so bad.
Thanks, I enjoy being free.
http://scaredmonkeys.com/2010/01/19/obamacare-reaches-all-time-new-low-38-in-favor-56-opposed/
Numerical advantages in House and Senate or not, thusly we have throat-cramming...
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